Description

Given the popularity of the LibQUAL+ survey as an assessment tool, there is the potential for institutions to share results and strategies to inform and improve the impact of instruction programs and information literacy (IL) initiatives. This poster presentation will illustrate how institutions have used LibQUAL+ for strategic planning and the allocation of resources with regards to IL, as well as how to best use core survey items and customization options to mine IL data. With the high cost of implementation of most large-scale survey efforts, institutions will benefit from using LibQUAL+ to its fullest potential.
The number of libraries participating in the LibQUAL+ survey, which assesses various dimensions of service and resources, continues to grow each year. Given its popularity as an assessment tool, there are many opportunities for institutions to share results and strategies that would inform and improve instruction programs and information literacy (IL) initiatives throughout the field. In preparation for the Spring 2012 implementation of the LibQUAL+ survey at our library, we have planned various ways to make use of the core survey items, customization options, and qualitative comments of the LibQUAL survey and its results to assess the effectiveness of our instruction program and IL services on our campus.
There are countless papers, presentations, and scholarship efforts devoted to the utility of the LibQUAL+ survey; a review of the published literature and an extensive web search concerning institutions that have utilized LibQUAL+ results with regard to IL, however, yielded very few examples. This discovery brought to light a rich opportunity for investigation into the utility of this widely used and available survey. Of the institutions that have shared an account of their IL efforts after participating in the survey, actions taken have included allocating resources for the creation of tutorials, guides, pathfinders, and IL-specific positions, and creating opportunities to partner with faculty to bolster IL outcomes.
In the current iteration of the survey, there are five questions that specifically address IL outcomes. There is also some overlap of IL outcomes in the other dimensions of the survey: Affect of Service, Information Control, and Library as Place. Additionally, the survey allows for institutions to choose five local questions from a repository of over 100 items. With over twenty local questions identified as directly relating to IL outcomes, the customization option of choosing local questions is one of the richest sources of IL outcome measurement offered by the survey.
Furthermore, future implementations of the survey allow institutions to assess their IL efforts and possibly see marked differences in the mean scores between years. With the high cost of implementation of most large-scale survey efforts, institutions will benefit from using the data-rich results in the most dynamic ways possible with regard to IL.